Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last Friday I was in the Mitchels area of Tralee. I visited an award-winning social housing scheme for older people of 56 houses. I was informed that ten of those houses are empty and another four have been unoccupied for more than three years because the tenants are part of the fair deal scheme and have been in a nursing home for up to three years. Almost 25% of the houses in this scheme, which was constructed in around 2014 or 2015, is heated from a central source and is award-winning, are currently empty. At a local level, I note that all emergency accommodation in the entire county of Kerry is funnelled into Tralee town centre. There are four or five hostels within 250 m of each other. At a local level, there seems to be no coherent strategy for dealing with it that would allow people who become homeless around the county to remain in their local areas.

On a general level, we have seen that the Government has lost control of the homeless situation. It did not introduce an emergency response ban. There are 11,000 people who are officially homeless, but the reality is that figure is up to 18,000 when we take into account the number of people who are in emergency accommodation. I call on the Minister to deal with the issue at a local level and to give the local authorities targets. I spoke to the Minister last summer in relation to money that was made available for councils to purchase housing stock. The councils were saying that they did not receive the instruction. I think the then Taoiseach described that as a cop-out by Kerry County Council. There seems to be a communication problem between the two. Clear targets need to be given to the local authorities to deal with the housing stock that they have. The Government must also use emergency planning and procurement powers to ensure that there are more social and affordable homes, as well as extending the ban on evictions, which must be done immediately.

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